Evidencing the effectiveness of publicly-funded interventions

Teesside University launched a new service at the start of the 2019-20 academic year to provide external organisations with a tailored approach to evidencing the effectiveness of their publicly-funded interventions.

Dr Helen Moore leads the day-to-day work of the Evaluation and Impact Team which supports the Centre for Applied Psychological Science and Centre for Social Innovation, whose research spans across education, social work, psychology, criminology, public policy and local community/public health programmes.

“We work with organisations to co-develop a bespoke evaluation plan so they can demonstrate the impact of their project, now and in the future, especially on societal challenges,” said Dr Moore.

“Many organisations are measured on their success in achieving social outcomes, which is central to their ability to maintain trust and legitimacy with both their stakeholders and future funders. Increasingly those organisations need to be able to provide independent evidence to funding bodies that demonstrate how outcomes and evaluation has been achieved. This type of evaluative research is often complex, crosses a wide variety of academic disciplines, and requires independence to demonstrate rigour.”

In its first six months, the Evaluation and Impact Team was commissioned to work on a range of evaluation projects – these included a UK Research and Innovation funded project with Thirteen Housing Group on enhancing place-based partnerships in public engagement; a mental health trailblazer evaluation awarded by the North of England Commissioning Unit; and a pilot study of two mutual aid services to support vulnerable individuals in coastal communities.

However, it is the team’s development of a heroin assisted treatment pilot evaluation report that has arguably been one of the most significant projects to date.

In October 2019, after a number of years developing a heroin assisted treatment pilot offer, a steering group was established between Foundations, the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland, Probation (Durham Tees Valley CRC and HMPPS) and South Tees Public Health to drive forward the agenda and became the first area in the country to obtain Home Office licenses and deliver the heroin assisted treatment service.

Research Associate Hannah Poulter, who has led work around harm reduction interventions in opiate dependency, said: “Our evaluation provides a snapshot of health, psychosocial and offending behaviour of the first heroin assisted treatment pilot cohort in the UK. Data from a variety of sources were aggregated by our team to build a picture of participants’ behaviour – all of which are important indicators of recovery and stabilisation of this population.”

The Evaluation and Impact Team’s evaluation report of the pilot delivered to the commissioning group cited how encouraging positive changes were observed within the heroin assisted treatment pilot population during year one of its operation, including: increased engagement with psychosocial interventions, reductions in consumption of street heroin, reduction of risky injecting practices, improvements in physical and psychological health, improvements in secure housing, and reductions in the volume and cost of criminal behaviour. Further analysis will be possible as the project is rolled out and participant numbers increase.

This work has enabled the Evaluation and Impact Team to secure further grant funding from NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North East and North Cumbria to qualitatively explore the characteristics of, and attitudes towards, the heroin assisted treatment pilot programme from the perspectives of people who inject drugs, stakeholders and professionals. Evaluation of the project’s cost savings is also in development.

Dr Moore added: “Despite the challenges of Covid-19, which has inevitably led to a shift in delivery and timescales on some projects which require the gathering of participant views, we have continued ‘business as usual’ during the pandemic.

“In our first two years we have delivered bespoke research-led evaluation projects of grant-funded projects across the region, and have the capability to support national projects too depending on funding streams. These provide external organisations with evidence to illustrate the value and impact of interventions intended to tackle the major challenges facing society.

“With the use of public money likely to be under increasing scrutiny as we move towards recovery from the pandemic, we anticipate even greater demand for our expertise and services.”

---